Mr. Speaker, I stand today to oppose Bill C-111 because I see this as the government playing political football with the UI system.
I had the opportunity recently of doing a householder questionnaire in my riding with regard to UI. Out of 1,110 replies, 608 said the government should get out of UI and turn the entire program over to joint management, as it is already being funded by employers and employees.
I have to go along with that when I look at the cost of administering the unemployment act today: $1.2 billion taken right off the backs of the working people. It is too unmanageable.
If there are concerns in terms of the unemployment insurance program, it should be left up to the people who are contributing directly to it, the workers and the employers, not the government. This government, along with the other governments, has done absolutely nothing with regard to correcting unemployment.
Out of that survey, 436 or 39 per cent said to tighten up and streamline the existing programs; 675 said to give employers and employees greater say in how it is run; 633 said to have the same qualifying period across Canada and forget all these differences; 628 said to shorten the period people can collect; 608 said to establish a separate fund for fishermen outside of the UI program; 569 said there should be a longer qualifying period but only 369 or 33 per cent out of 1,110 said to lower the amounts people can collect.
From this survey there seems to be a widespread awareness with regard to seasonal workers. In my constituency there are a number of seasonal workers in agriculture, tourism and forestry. These are the three biggest areas in my constituency. These are the three biggest contributors to the UI program. They see nothing here that would do anything to help that situation in order to collect.
Families are hard pressed in Canada today. We look at what is going on. We wonder what has really happened here. We have forced both parents out into the work world in order to pay rising taxes. We have lost the total concept of family unity because of government policies.
I regard this tax grab by the government as just another policy, another penalty to put on the working people, another way to keep the government satisfied with the way it lives and not the way the working people of Canada have to live.
Why are so many people unemployed? What has the government been doing for two years? This is the question out there. We can
talk to educated people coming out of our universities. They are the people looking for work. What has the government done? Its fancy spin doctors put in all kinds of things they have done, this and that, but the bottom line is the unemployment level is still there and the people on welfare are still there.
There is a mine waiting to come into production in northern B.C. It is called Kemess. There has been a large amount of money spent on the exploration work of this mine. There are a lot of people waiting, a lot of jobs waiting. They went through the whole scenario, through the provincial jurisdictions. They went to every office they had to go to.
The province passed the environmental part of it. It passed everything. It signed off. It told these people to go ahead. Now comes the federal government. Here comes this caring, sharing, worrying federal government. It says: "We checked this lake out and there are nine pair of bull trout and so this mine cannot go ahead". Five hundred jobs this caring, sharing government has put on hold; $350 million. It means nothing to the people in the House sitting over there. Do we really have much faith in any program regarding unemployment which the government can bring in? I think not.
Where has industry gone? What has happened to our jobs? We spend too much. The government spends too much so it has to raise taxes. When we raise taxes we drive industry out. When we drive industry out we have high unemployment.
We listened to the government. It made promises in its beautiful fancy red book. It was presented on a platter for the people to look at so they could judge the government. This was before the election. It mentioned the GST. The GST has hit employers something fierce. They spend a lot of their time after hours trying to collect taxes for the government while not getting paid for it.
They have no more holidays like they used to have. Again it takes away one or both from the family so the government can feed off the taxpayer. The government promised it was to get rid of the GST. Liberals stood on the platforms all across the country. They swore to the people out there because they wanted their votes. They said the GST will be gone within two years. If I remember correctly the Deputy Prime Minister offered to resign; another unkept promise and the GST is still there.
The big fear now is maybe the Liberals will try to introduce something else twice as expensive. They say they will change the name: UI to EI, unemployment insurance to employment insurance. I ask the hon. members on the other side, what is the cost to the taxpayer of the government's changing a lousy name in order to introduce this?
Why could you not still call it unemployment insurance and make your changes, because one of you wanted to get a little star on a book beside your name? That will cost us another million dollars or so. You think people out there are stupid. They are not stupid. They know exactly what you are doing.